Someone was bound to live-tweet a suicide eventually, and that sad day has come: Seattle-based rapper Freddy E. — best known for for his YouTube series, “Jerk TV” — took his own life over the weekend and offered up a play-by-play via his Twitter account. He was 22.

WARNING: What follows is heartbreaking.

After tweeting about a wild night out with his boys — including posting the pic above of himself posing with a bottle of ibuprofen the morning after — Freddie E., whose real name was Frederick E. Buhl, experienced something (he hinted that a romantic breakup may have been to blame) that sent him to a dark place and triggered a series of cryptic tweets, culminating in this one…

Below is the entire series of cryptic tweets, beginning at the bottom with a tweet signaling something had gone terribly wrong in his life.

Today, our son, Frederick Eugene Buhl (@freddy_E), age 22 years old, took his own life with a rifle shot to the head. Our family is saddened beyond words; our loss is great; this tragedy is enormous and unforseen. Not only our family, but the world has lost a talented, sensitive, brilliant young man who lit up our existence with his. We love him a great deal, and he will be sorely missed. We pray that God will now watch over him, and we ask all of you to include Frederick and our entire family in your thoughts and prayers.

There’s an enourmous difference between promotion and awareness. It’s still relevant and newsorthy and maybe even helpful for someone else having a rough time. Pretending it didn’t happen is ignorant and serves no purpose.

Awareness is saying “Man live tweets his suicide” with a story.
Promoting it is reprinting all of the tweets.
Not reporting it at all isn’t “ignorant”, either. One might actually say it’s resisting the urge to gain clicks via sensationalizing the death of a man.

There’s a difference between pretending something didn’t happen and simply not reporting it, Lewis. This article, for example, does not pretend that the Holocaust didn’t happen merely because it didn’t mention it.

I really do not at all understand the appeal of posthumous fame, but apparently such appeal does exist for some people, so I guess I can see the potential hazard in giving press to a rapper most of us have likely never heard of just because he live-tweeted his suicide.

But hey, on the other hand, maybe “live tweet your own suicide” could be the new “murder a bunch of people and then yourself,” and spare us a couple mass murders in the future. I’d welcome that change.

A lot of people on Twitter retweet things all the time in a way that’s out of a context. Anyone with a following could retweet the same exact thing and get as many, or more retweets. The irony is that this was actually a cry for help. However, people post so many personal things on Twitter that it’s hard to decipher whether a tweet is simply a tweet, or an honest appeal for someone to listen.

I hope this man rests in peace and my prayers go out to his family, but this is the downside of too much social media. How do you think all those people felt that retweeted, only to find out he was ACTUALLY going to kill himself? How do you think his family feels because they DIDN’T see the tweet? It’s just a shitstorm of craziness.

Look, I’ve been in love two or three times in my life and subsequently lost those people, and yes, it sucked and hurt, at the time, more than anything I could have imagined. But I persevered and looking back, I laugh that I let another pooping/peeing/barfing/sweating/ human being (which we all are) have such an effect on me. I live for me and for my responsibilities…not because of what someone else does for me.

And here’s a guy that probably smoked the shit out of weed, did coke, and had no problem whatsoever doing whatever party drug might be available (I’m really making assumptions here), but would he go to a doc to get a prozac to help him get through this major depression? Hell naw…that’s for bitches.

As a young person around the same age as this guy, I can’t say I’ve experienced tremendous heartbreak yet. But no one is worth it, and he should have lived for himself. I don’t know anything about him, but it sounds like he had reasonable success as a rapper, which is more than a lot of depressed young people can claim. Instead of offing yourself, channel that shit into a verse or 10, put it on youtube, etc. I feel that should be the general advice for troubled young people: “Stop moping and start trying to be awesome at something.” Success is the best medicine, I think.

Live-tweeting wasn’t a cry for help or a stab at fame… if anything he was trying to make himself commit to the act. My guess is he made it public to make sure he went through with it. Sad, to be sure.

My heart goes out to this guys family. As a parent, I always wonder if I’m doing enough to instill in my child that with all the bullshit and sorrow in the world, its still a great place to be and that every second of life is worth living.